Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sharknado But Were Afraid to Ask

All we have are the locals and they’re very hard to judge. We don’t get the real numbers, the actual cable nationals, until 4 o’clock. But I think it goes beyond the ratings in terms of the impact and the importance to Syfy. First of all, it just gets your name out there. It increases the network’s visibility and it shows the network’s sense of humor. Syfy is a network that has such a wide range of programming. We have one of the top reality series in “Face Off,” we have in incredible scripted series in “Defiance.”

What I love about the social media comments last night was the viewers got what we were doing. They understood that we were creating an event that was meant to provide entertainment. That’s what this movie is about. Syfy’s won Emmys. “Battlestar Galactica” got us a Peabody. But we also want people to be able to kick off their shoes, put their feet up, grab a beverage of choice and be entertained.

We’ve done about 250 of these movies, and when we first started doing them, viewers didn’t always get the spirit they were meant in. We got a lot of questions from viewers, a lot of questions from the press. Now viewers really get it. Hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter were talking about “Sharknado” and they all got that we were having fun.

22 thoughts on “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sharknado But Were Afraid to Ask”

Say what you will about Defiance, but “great scripted television” it is not. Perhaps “decent video-game tie-in”, but as television we’re talkin Caprica here, not BSG. I’m sure Sharkanado will be fun, but you really should do another “Dune” for us subscribers who don’t think the problem with game shows was that they weren’t in night vision.

But seriously, I do think it’s pretty cool that SyFy remembers Roger Corman. SciFi cred right there, I’m just saying Sharktopus is great, but so was “The Intruder”.

Also, not pleased you didn’t choose my entry in the contest for a SyFy movie idea, “Too Many Squirrels!”. Woulda been awesome.

About a year ago, my youngest sister and I were making up titles for Saturday SyFy movies, and I am pretty sure one of the ones she came up with was Sharknado. One of my offerings was Pirahnacane. Am guessing, with the success of Sharknado, that Pirahnacane can’t be too far behind.

I kind of feel like the name change from SciFi to SyFy was the hallmark of the decline. There were the glory days when they took Stargate and made it into a TV series, had great scripted dramas like BSG – but there’s also been a steady stream of really bad movies in the background.